I thought this was more deserving of derisive tweets than formal rebuttals, but I got the opportunity to teach more people about diffusion curves, and that’s what matters in the end.
The report’s authors even suggest that, without global controls on AI research, AI systems could cause human extinction: “Eventually it finds the remaining humans too much of an impediment: in mid-2030, the AI releases a dozen quiet-spreading biological weapons in major cities, lets them silently infect almost everyone, then triggers them with a chemical spray. Most are dead within hours; the few survivors (e.g., preppers in bunkers, sailors on submarines) are mopped up by drones.” It’s a forecast more grounded in severe mental illness than empirical reality.
For a long time, the overlap between factual descriptions of the motivations of AI Doomers and acceptable political language was close to zero. I’m glad that’s changed, Goldwater rule be damned.
As promised, I explain the concept of S-curves to the City Journal audience. Though this likely isn’t news to regular readers of this newsletter.
The history of innovation offers reason to doubt the safetyists. Every major research field in history has eventually reached a point of diminishing returns, where useful discoveries become increasingly rare. The pattern holds across disciplines—physics, chemistry, and economics—and is visible at a more granular scale, too, from antibiotics to railroads to CPUs. Initial bursts of progress taper off as fields mature, following an economic pattern known as the “S-Curve.”
Despite gains in computing power and economies of scale, fundamental AI research is getting harder, not easier. The core problem is that the remaining unsolved challenges are growing more complex faster than our tools are improving.
Finally, I direct readers to Will Rinehart’s wonderful cost analysis of currently existing AI regulations.
In practice, these laws work as jobs programs for lawyers. Rinehart found that up to 1,140 compliance hours per business may be necessary for a single regulation, the BIS reporting rule. Dozens of these regulations, applying to tens of thousands of companies, compound into billion-dollar compliance industries. The regulations function as an annual tax of hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions. They raise fixed costs, preventing new startups from competing and benefiting incumbents.
Yes because that’s just what we need is Governments in charge of something that is allegedly an existential threat.
Yes because just whet we need is Governments in charge of something that is allegedly an existential threat.